1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to computer supported collaborated work and, more particularly, to intelligently collaborating with computers in a network with one or more agents.
2. Background Description
With ubiquitous connectivity on the horizon, collaborative computing promises to become one of this new century's core applications. People will be more and more involved in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) because of the pressure from companies to improve their product-development and decision making process and because of the convenience brought by the information super-highway.
There are four modes conceptualized by CSCW researchers on how people work; synchronous mode, distributed synchronous mode, asynchronous mode, and distributed asynchronous mode. Synchronous mode refers to the situation where activities occur at the same time and in the same place. Distributed synchronous mode refers to the situation where activities occur at the same time but at different places. Asynchronous mode refers to the situation where activities occur at different times in the same place. Distributed asynchronous mode refers to the situation where activities occur at different times and places.
Many computer systems support simultaneous interaction by more than one user. However, most of them support multiuser interaction in a way that prohibits cooperation; that is, they give each user the illusion that the user is the only one using the system. To support and encourage cooperation, cooperative applications must allow users to be aware of the activities of others. The purpose of a cooperative multiuser interface is to establish and maintain a common context, allowing the activities or events associated with one user to be reflected on other users' screens. For example, Lotus® Sametime is a family of real-time collaboration products which provides instant awareness, communication, and document sharing capabilities, bringing the flexibility and efficiency of real-time communication to the business world.
With awareness of coworkers, partners, or customers online, users can communicate in a variety of ways. However, a direct reflection of all the activities on other users' screen is not approachable. The first reason is that it wastes communication bandwidth, especially when users are far apart and the amount of data to be transmitted, such as video data, is huge. The second reason is that many users may not like the situation that his or her activities are broadcasted to all the other members of the team. The third reason is that each user is concentrating on his or her own work and does not have the energy and motivation to monitor every movement of other users.
Thus, it is critical for CSCW interface to analyze activities of a given user, detect that important events have occurred, and only reflect necessary events to other agents.
Event perception will be even more important to CSCW in the pervasive computing world, where the dominance of the traditional PC as the primary computing resource is replaced by a large collection of devices with embedded computing. These intelligent, interconnected devices will be seamlessly embedded within our offices, constantly sensing and reacting to the environment. The information provided by these pervasive devices within an office environment will be very important in CSCW applications.
Autonomous agents are expected to be of great value to a CSCW system and a certain amount of future research on CSCW will be centered on multi-agent aspect of groupware. A multi-agent approach to CSCW can capture the dynamics of a team work and even re-shape its form and characteristics. The automation brought by CSCW agents will dramatically reduce certain types of frictional costs during team work. Furthermore, the intelligence of a multi-agent CSCW system will be able to keep the privacy of its user and the security of each user's local work.